Kenneth Branagh - Page 2

Despite its fair share of early development problems, Disney's upcoming 'Cinderella' movie finally seems to be getting its act together. The most recent news from the production is that 'The Borgias' star Holliday Grainger is in final talks to join as one of the title character's cruel stepsisters.

After the success of 'Alice in Wonderland' (over $1 billion - yes, with a B - worldwide), Disney has been hot to reboot their Disney princess movies. With a 'Sleepy Beauty' reboot on the way (in the form of Angelina Jolie's 'Maleficent'), the next live-action princess film on the way was scheduled to be 'Cinderella' but that was before director Mark Romanek abruptly left the project. What Prince Charming could step in and rescue the project before it turned into a pumpkin? Enter: Kenneth Branagh.

This Jack Ryan movie keeps moving forward, and now that it's filled the major pieces of casting, it just got a release date of December 25, 2013. So families tired of the holiday can sneak out and watch Chris Pine kill some Russians.

Since he burst onto the Shakespearean scene thirty-some-odd years ago, actor/director Kenneth Branagh has been called the second coming of Sir Laurence Olivier by those who know their Shakespeare. Now, they both have something else in common in addition to that whole "capable of performing tricky dialogue from the greatest writer of all time" thing: Branagh is now a Knight of the British Empire. So, next time you run into him, remember that it's Sir Kenneth, thank you very much.

After director Jack Bender left the project to pursue more television, it looked like Paramount's Chris Pine-starring reboot of the Jack Ryan franchise (with the character previously played Harrison Ford in 'Clear and Present Danger', Alec Baldwin in 'The Hunt for Red October' and Ben Affleck in 'The Sum of All Fears) was on the ropes. Not so, as Kenneth Branagh is now in talks to helm the as yet untitled Ryan adventure, with a script being currently reworked by David Koepp ('Jurassic Park', 'Carlito's Way')